Shattered (Extreme Risk 2)

I keep my distance, though, asking, “Do you have any of those masks, Timmy? The ones to keep you from getting germs?”

His eyes go wide. “Yeah. Of course. My mom brings them everywhere.”

“Can you get me one? I’ve got a fever, and if it’s some bug, I don’t want to get you sick.”

Timmy nods and runs to get one, but not before I see the concern in his eyes. He knows what I’m thinking, what I’m worried about. Hell, he’s probably been in just this place more than once himself.

He comes back a few seconds later, hands me the mask. I wait for him to ask questions, but he doesn’t.

“What are you even doing up?” I ask him as I look him up and down. “I thought we were all supposed to be sleeping in this morning.”

He looks at me pointedly. “I’ve got less than a month to live. I already spend too much of my time sleeping. Besides, medicine.” He nods to the table where both Ericka and his mother are sitting, looking at me with concern. Spread out across it are pills in every color of the rainbow.

I remember those days. Hell, if I look closely enough, I’m pretty sure I’ll remember some of those pills. Timmy has a different type of cancer than I did, but the result—and the medications used to fight that result—are depressingly similar.

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to Ericka. That okay with you, man?”

“Definitely!” He gives me a hug, before all but running to the other side of the room. “The longer you talk to her, the longer I have before she starts to poke at me. It’s a win-win.” With that, he curls up on the sofa to watch with intense concentration an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants dubbed in Spanish—which sounds weird but is strangely mesmerizing. I know, because I’ve been trying not to get sucked in pretty much from the second I walked into the suite.

“What’s going on, babe? You okay?” Ericka asks, waving me into the seat next to her. “Don’t think for a second, Timmy, that I’m going to let you escape without taking every single one of these pills.”

Timmy nods vaguely, without taking his eyes off the television set. Ericka looks like she’s going to push it, but Timmy’s mom murmurs, “Give him a little while. Fifteen minutes either way isn’t going to hurt anything.” The “at this point” hangs in the air for all that it is unsaid.

“I’m running a fever.” I blurt out the words without meaning to. I’d planned to lead up to them, to explain why I’m concerned before I got to the crux of the matter.

But I can tell from the look on Ericka’s face that my explanation isn’t necessary. So I was right. She does know I had cancer.

“How high?” she asks, her hand automatically going to my forehead.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll get the thermometer,” Mrs. Varek says and as she walks by me, she rubs a comforting hand down my back.

That freaks me out more than anything else, convinces me that this isn’t some weird waking nightmare. That it’s actually happening.

“You do feel warm,” Ericka tells me. “But let’s not panic yet. When did the fever start?”

“I don’t know. I woke up with it a couple hours ago.”

She nods. “Do you feel sick?”

“No.”

“No nausea? No headache? No—”

“Nothing. I feel completely fine.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” She puts a cheery smile on her face. “How long have you been in remission?”

“Seven weeks now.”

“And what kind of cancer did you have?”

“Rhabdomyosarcoma.”

She winces a little at that, and so does Timmy, who suddenly seems much less interested in SpongeBob. I meet his eyes over Ericka’s shoulder, and though he smiles at me, I see a sadness in his face that’s usually not there. I hate it, hate that he can be sad for me when he’s never sad for himself.

Ericka asks a bunch of other questions, then takes my blood pressure and my temperature. The blood pressure is a little high—big shock considering I’m one very small step away from freaking out completely—and the fever is very high. One hundred and three, even with the Tylenol.